Looking at the top results returned from Google, you have to wonder how people still buy HTC. They make pathetic phones. This is a company that wants to make money by ripping people off. I hope those of us who burned our hands can come together to keep spreading the word with our colleagues, friends, & relatives. Together lets put HTC out of business or atleast kick them out of India.

Here is a comment from the above website – I can feel the pain of this person.

“THIS IS THE WORST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN MY LIFE!!!
I am sending several emails to in_service@htc.com, but there is no response!!!
Dear friends, please suggest something to wipe away such cheaters from our country.”

I found one more person who had a very similar experience as me. His post is very informative on how the water damage in HTC Touch is detected and not surprisingly the sticker that is supposed to change color when it comes in contact with water is placed very close to the edge of the device. Talking in rain can potentially change the color of the sticker. This is an easy way for HTC Customer Service to refuse to pay for a manufacturing device.

Today I saw a demo of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in the local mall and I have to say it is quite impressive. The price quoted was around Rs 19K and that seems like a good deal if you are considering HTC Touch which at Rs 14K comes with a very flaky design (see below). The screen size of the Noka 5800 is 640 x 360 and supports up to 16 million colors. One of the cool features that I liked was if you keep the Nokia 5800 with screen facing down, it goes into a silent mode. This is really useful for people who have to attend meetings everyday. No need to keep changing the mode. Just keep the phone upside down and you are all set. Nice, no?. It has other cool features similar to iPhone like automatic orientation sensor. It has one touch to take you directly to your music listings, a small speaker in the back and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

Overall, on a feature-by-feature basis, it totally beats the crap out of HTC Touch and with Nokia’s legendary reliability, it is a safe buy.

I am curious if people who bought a HTC Touch in Chennai are facing any problems. I have chronicled my experience buying a HTC Touch and the problems I faced below. According to the HTC support people, my phone had corrosion on the board which is because of water seepage. Now, I never put the phone in the water not did I keep the phone anywhere near to water sources. However, it is a fact that Chennai has very humidity levels throught out the year and I don’t know if that caused the problem. I am curious to hear the experiences of other people. Btw, I bought a Nokia N72 2 years ago and it is working just great. I have to say that Nokia phones are very resilient. I have dropped the phone several times and despite all the abuse it takes, it keeps working like new. Good job Nokia.

Please read my post below on my experience buying an HTC Touch and subsequent interactions with the support folks. It was not a pleasant experience (to put it mildly). Anyways, one of things that blew me away was the fact that the cost of repairing the corrosion on the board was Rs 13K whereas the cost of the new phone was Rs 14K – which means pretty much everything other than the outer shell needs to replaced (including the touch screen). Does this mean there is a design problem with HTC Touch? If everything is crammed onto a single board, you have no choice but to replace the entire board. Isn’t it better to cough up another 1K and a buy a new phone. I am not sure what the HTC strategy is – but this is really not in favor of the customers.

I bought a HTC Touch phone towards the end of Sep, 2008 at a Vivek’s store in Chennai. The cost of the phone was Rs 14K. One month later the phone started misbehaving. Once when the charge was quite low, I connected the phone for charging. When I switched on the charger, the phone re-booted completely. After rebooting it showed an error message saying that the “SIM card is missing”. I called Vivek’s customer service number and told them of the problems. They told me that they are not responsible for any issues and that I should contact HTC directly. Apparently Vivek will sell the phone but not support it.

Since it was a new phone, I did not want to give up on it. I used to transfer the SIM to an old cell that I stopped using, charge the HTC Touch completely and transfer the SIM back. After couple of reboots, the phone would detect the SIM card and things went fine till the next charge. Of course, this could not go on forever. After making a business trip and returning back to India, I promptly searched the net for a HTC dealership in Chennai. The nearest service center was one “RT Outsourcing Service Ltd” in Egmore. I made a trip to their office and gave a detailed account of my problems and handed over the phone to them. I was confident that HTC will fix the problems or hand me a replacement. This is where the nightmare begins.

After a week or so, I got a call from the technician at RT Outsourcing Service Ltd. The technician explained to me that the faulty behavior of the phone is because of corrosion on one of the circuit boards in the phone. Then he dropped the bomb. The corrosion on the board is not covered under the warranty and I need to pay for fixing it. I got pretty furious and told the person that I have nothing to do with the corrosion and I took good care of the phone. After paying 14K for a new phone, I am asked to pay again for a manufacturer’s defect? And the unbelievable part – the cost of replacing the board is Rs 13K. I paid 14K for the new phone and I am being asked to pay 13K to get it repaired. This was really ridiculous. I was told to call the HTC support number (1800 11 33 77) and register my complaint with them directly, which I did. The support person on the phone listened to all the details and finally told me to send a email to in_service@htc.com with all details. I did not understand the logic behind that but I nevertheless sent them all the details. After exchanging emails for close to 3 weeks, the support person who should be a total moron, came back and told me that corrosion is not covered under warranty. All of this after I clearly wrote him all the details in the first mail itself. I guess he never paid any attention to the details.

I am fed up with HTC and the poor support. I am going to throw the HTC Touch phone away since paying Rs 13K to get the phone repaired is out of question. I hope people who are thinking of buying an HTC seriously look at the support system and decide carefully. HTC phones are expensive and it would be a waste of money if problems show up.